Thread by @AnnaCaudill4

Ok. I’ve tried to answer this for more than a week & been overcome every time. 47 days have passed since my friend engaged a shooter in the hallway of the private Christian school where she was headmaster. The shooter murdered her. #CovenantSchool 1/

https://twitter.com/daviddark/status/1653799588787105799

I am grateful that Kathy White, deaconess at @CPCnashville, spoke up about the need for meaningful gun reform. That she & the alumni of Christ Presbyterian Academy, where she & @DavidDark & I taught alongside Katherine Koonce, called on @GovBillLee to value children over guns. 2/

I am grateful for @DPCassidyTKC’s courage in speaking up, as any time a pastor speaks up on an issue like that, they risk being called partisan, too political, woke. But it wasn’t Pastor David’s first encounter with gun violence, & his conviction required his voice. 3/

I want to call the raising of those voices sweet, and yet I feel the weight of their lament. This is not the voice in the wilderness, but the voice of Rachel crying for her children, refusing to be comforted. It is heartbreaking. 4/

I am grateful for the voices of others speaking freely, because advocating for the safety of our children in schools, in malls, in houses of worship, is not a partisan concern. Should never be. 5/

I am horrified that as of this moment, nobody from @tnhousegop, @tnsenategop, or @TNGOP has publicly addressed members who claimed #CovenantSchool parents came to TN Capitol with pipe bombs & brass knuckles, that they were violent, or commented on their physical attractiveness.6/

It’s a weird flex for @TNGOP to claim they’re the pro-life party when their re-election depends on insulating manufacturers of weapons of mass execution and not the lives of children. There is no pro-life gun. 7/

I think that everyone in Nashville & Franklin whose lives were forever delineated on 3/27 into Before the Shooting and After the Shooting need to proceed with caution, to weigh words, to expect honesty. We must require it from all sides. 8/

I was invited to speak at a gathering of faith leaders a couple of weeks after #CovenantSchool, ahead of a march. I spoke about my family, about how my great-uncle adored me. He always told me I was smart, always told me do my best, always bragged on me. 9/

This uncle owned a bar, & frequently he would send out customers too inebriated to safely drive.
One night as my family drove home from church, one of those drivers hit us head on, his car plowing into & over us, destroying our car.
That we survived is a miracle. 10/

My uncle never spoke of it. Not to my parents, who were renting a duplex from him at the time & were expected to make rent even though they were shopping for a replacement car. Not to me, though he loaned my dad the money for my semester of study in London 30 years ago. 11/

As the #CovenantSchool families navigate these days, there will be many officials with all the power necessary to protect children’s lives, who will profess love of Christ, conservative values, & still act as though their hands are tied, as though it’s just business. 12/

Every time any of us touched by the #CovenantSchool shooting allows them to pretend that they care for our loss, while they delay remedy for any reason, we are co-opted into a theater whose purpose is to distract and deflect while the slaughter of innocents continues unabated.13/

That theater includes any attempt to frame the #CovenantSchool shooting as the action of a trans person bent on destroying Christians. It’s a lie that has been used to drive social media engagement & ad revenue & steer people’s terror away from the fact of their lives at risk.14/

I will not engage in this pretense, this notion that church leaders & officials have secret knowledge of why it’s impossible to restore the common-sense gun regulations we had in the 1990s, including the assault weapons ban. There’s no secret knowledge. There is only life. 15/

Anyone who asks us to focus on a manifesto, on the shooter’s sexuality, on personal liberty or anything else, is asking us to pretend along with them that a gun is more valuable, more sacred, more holy, than a child’s life.

Raise your voice.

Children over guns. It’s time. /f